Sunday, July 31, 2011

Guess what?!?!?! I'M ENGAGED!!!!!!! To Brigham Matthew Barzee..... that's right--my name is gonna be Rachel Barzee. Brigham and I met our freshman year in our single's ward, where we dated for 3 months. He then left on his mission to Korea, and when he got back this past December, we started dating again in January..... and now were getting married!!!

Im sure whoever is reading this blog post would like to know how he proposed, so here is the story:

We were in Newport Beach on vacation with my family when after five days of being there Brigham asks me to go to dinner 'just us'....... of course i get a little suspicious despite his constant efforts to reassure me he didn't have the ring, therefore he couldn't propose... Well we go to dinner at Andrea, the best restaurant in all of Newport, where we giggled eating expensive Italian cuisine. The restaurant is, of course, on a hillside overlooking the ocean and after we ate dessert we watched the sun set over the dark blue water--super romantic right?

Then we parked and walked down to the beach where we set out a couple towels and laid down on the sand to look at the stars. Brigham gets out his camera to take some pictures (by this time it was really dark so sorry you cant see too much) while conveniently setting up the camera to record the whole scene without me noticing.

As we were looking at the stars he turns on Pandora, which just happened to play" Say, All We Need"by OneRepublic-- a song we always listened to together freshman year. It was perfect. Then, using Brigham exact words, " I remember us laying there and talking about getting married. And I asked her if she wanted to get engaged tonight and she smiled and said yes, and i smiled and said "me too"... then Brig said this calls for some dancing, whipping out his playlist he prepared of songs we listened to while dating.... first up was Dancin in the Moonlight by Toploader.... So there we were two people in love fast dancing to this song as the waves crashed over our feet. In the moonlight:)

The song ends and just before the next one comes on he says "Rachel, you mean everything to me".... and right after Michael Bublé chime in "you're a falling star, you're the getaway car, you're the line in the sand when I go to far." Again, it was perfection because he would always sing this song to me when we first started dating almost three years ago. Well after that we slow danced to some more songs, and then he says "You want to know what I really want right now" and of course Im like yes, expecting him to say "you".... nope the little trickster said "I really wish I had your engagement ring right now.......... but this will have to do" and he pulls out a temporary ring with my centerstone in it. (The setting is on its way and should be here in less than a week). He then got on one knee, gave a speech that I'm not allowed to repeat, but basically says how much he loves me, and proposes! We both were emotional (even though Brigham refuses to acknowledge his tears) as we hugged each other. We ran and played in the waves for a couple more minutes (maybe kissing along the way) and then went back to tell my family the news.

Im so happy to have met the love of my life and im so excited to marry my best friend:)

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

This past Thursday was my birthday, and it was a great birthday indeed. My WONDERFUL family came all the way from Colorado to surprise me!!! And boy did they get me good. Of course Brigham was in on the whole thing and made it all run very smoothly.... telling me not to plan anything because he claimed the whole day for himself, and making sure we were at my apartment when my mom and two sisters rang the doorbell. I wont bore you with all the details but we had some wonderful time together hanging out, shopping, eating (which is a big deal in my family), searching for misplaced objects, and seeing HARRY POTTER!

That Thursday night Brig, Becca and I got all dressed up (in my new hp glasses and cloak from the fam:)) to go see the midnight showing.... The lesser Harry Potter fans went the next night, bringing Becca and I for a second viewing (which i was happy with beeause it was that good)... anyways here are some of our sweet costumes.

Harry and Ginny

LUMOS

I cant even explain how much I love these books. I try and read them every summer, and each and every time I discover new secrets, meanings and information about the world that JK Rowling created. In October JK Rowling is releasing never seen before information about the HP series on her Pottermore website....... i cant wait!!

Brigham and Rachel

Brigham and I met our freshman year at BYU. After my trip to Spain, his mission to Korea and a whole lot of letters, we got married in December 2011. With our bachelor degrees and a medical adventure to Peru under our belts, we moved to St. Louis where Brigham is currently attending St. Louis University for medical school. We love our new city, our walks around Lafayette park, and are soo excited for our baby boy to arrive mid September.